Cosmic Radiation Speeds up Aging in Space?

SpaceAdmiral writes "The Theory of Relativity tells us that the faster a person travels the slower time passes for that person relative to someone left on Earth. This means that traveling at high velocities in a spacecraft should reduce one's aging. However, recent research suggests that cosmic radiation may counteract that anti-aging effect. Iron-nuclei radiation affects the aging of cells, which is possibly one of the reasons astronauts who have been to the Moon tend to get cataracts about 7 years earlier than other astronauts."

Comments

So...

[op12]

...time to put on my tinfoil suit!

Not much connection between those two things

[PIPBoy3000]

Going to the moon and back probably "slows down" time for an astronaut by a tiny fraction of a second.

Getting hit by a lot of hard radiation causes all sorts of cellular problems, not just cataracts.

How are the two connected again?

Re:Not much connection between those two things

[heatdeath]

How are the two connected again?

Exactly what I thought when I read this article. The effects of relativity won't be "counteracted" by cosmic radiation any more than a diet of donuts and lard can counteract the effects of relativity.

Big surprise, radiation kills you.

Bah!

[GillBates0]

Bah! You young 'uns and your fancy schmancy "cosmic radiation". In my day, we didn't have this uppity "Iron-nuclei radiation". We got by with regular sunshine in the day, moonlight during the night and we liked it.

Young..

[onion2k]

One way or another, NASA plans to keep their astronauts feeling young.

Miss Young was unavailable for comment.

Yeah, but that won't alter time

[iced_773]

The aging does not "counteract" the relativity. For example, you may look like you aged 50 years, but only 20 will actually have passed for you. Meanwhile, 50 years may actually have passed on Earth.

Cosmic radiation may age you, but it will not accelerate time.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[dougmc]

I know that you can't just be accelerated to C or 1/2 without infinite force.

You can't reach 1 c, because it would require infinite amounts of energy ... that's one way of looking at it, and as accurate as any other. As for 0.5 c, you can reach that -- you'll just need massive amounts of energy to accelerate a macroscopic object to that speed, at least by our current 20th century standards.

All I'm saying is that we won't know untill we try

Until we try what? Try to accelerate Geraldo to 0.5 c out of the solar system? I'd pay a dollar to see that!

The effects of relativity have been measured experimentally. Atomic clocks put onto planes and flown around the world have been found to run very slightly slower, and subatomic particles that are known to last for X picoseconds have been found to last much longer when zipping about at 0.999c. Neat stuff -- coming up with theories like this is one thing, but actually showing the effects in the real world -- that's what's really neat.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[steve_bryan]

If humans could only react to sound, then Einstien would likely have said that nothing goes faster than sound because we can't percieve it faster than sound.

If you are going to pontificate on a subject you might want to spend a little time actually studying it first. Einstein's idea that the speed of light was independent of observer had a lot to do with the results coming from Maxwell's equations and the null results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Only a dilettante could think there was a useful analogy to the speed of sound in this context.

It is also worth noting that time dilation and lorentz contaction are effects of special relativity that are verified on a daily basis in particle accelerators everywhere around the world. It is not a subject on which one holds an opinion except insofar as how you want to explain the overwhelming amount of independently measured results.

This part of physics has now been around for over a century (Einstein's first paper on relativity appeared in 1905) and the math behind it has been around even longer. There aren't too many books on differential geometry for the layman but there are many good sources of information about relativity theory by Kip Thorne, John Wheeler and others.

Isn't this already known?

[caluml]

Isn't this a given? Just as if you expose your skin to UV radiation on the beach all day, it'll age faster. Isn't aging (and cancer) just the decay of the DNA in your cells - aging just making them not grow back properly, and cancer making them grow wrongly?

Cataracts?

[Philip K Dickhead]

No! I drive Rincoln-Continentar!

anti-aging effects?

[cowboy76Spain]

Travelling to great speed does not have an anti aging effect... It changes the "duration" of time, but the effects on the body related to the time spend does not vary. The classical effect of the astronauts who returns to earth 70 years before having aged only 7 years is due to the fact that the astronaut has spend only 7 years in the space (from his point of view).

Lying makes you go blind DOUBLE PROOF

[netsavior]

which is possibly one of the reasons astronauts who have been to the Moon tend to get cataracts about 7 years earlier than other astronauts So basically this proves what my mom said Lying makes you go blind. It also proves that the moon missions were fake.

It's hysterical, and the editors knew it

[jfengel]

From the very tail end of the article: "This story should not be construed to mean that Einstein's theory of Special Relativity is wrong."

Einstein was completely correct. What's wrong is the idea that you can use the time-dilation effect to get to another solar system safely if you can get close enough to light speed, since even short times in space cause health effects. Which has nothing to do with "aging" per se, and even less to do with relativity. And still less to do with NASA's immediate plans, since NASA only has solar-system travel in mind for the next few decades.

So the final tally is:
Space travel: still dangerous
Einstein: correct
Article author: dipstick

Small Sample

[SEWilco]

I'm all in favor of further study on a larger number of people who go at least as far as the Moon.

Re:SAMPLE SIZE??? !!!

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

I mean c'mon. Is the sample size really large enough to make a call on the average number of years it takes for the onset of cataracts? How many people have walked the surface of the moon?

I did a survey at my cubicle and I conclude that 100% of the Earth's population agrees that the sample size is too small.

Another idiotic title/summary

[sk1tch]

What's with the latest string of intensely stupid articles on slashdot? First XBox downloads of apples outpaces iTunes downloads of oranges, and now a random fact of biology overrules an accepted theory of physics? Why do people write such retarded titles and how do they get posted?

Send in the Robots

[DumbSwede]

What a circuitous way to say that the Cosmic Ray and Solar Activity exposure of Space is bad for you. Scientific American had an in depth article on this just a month or two ago. As it turns out we have no really good ideas about how to adequately shield the human body from radiation in space and the problem only gets worse once you leave what little protection the Earth's magnetic shield provides. And before you suggest Magnetic Shielding or Material Shielding or Electrostatic Shielding, they crunched the numbers on all these things and the results were depressing. You can shield with a high enough Magnetic Field, but the Teslas involved are so high as to be worse that the radiation your trying to shield from (Earth's shield is effective because of size). Physical shielding requires a Meter or more of water all around (impractical because of weight). Etc., ect... We've made NO progress on really effective anti radiation measures in space. There are only coping strategies, so if you want to go to Mars just be prepared to give up 10-15 years off your expected life time on average or at best an early onset of senile dementia because you WILL loose quite a few neurons to radiation to realize your dreams of bounding around on Mars.

As a child I had been wildly enthusiastic about manned space flight or even becoming an astronaut myself some day. The fact that my 11th birthday coincided with the Apollo 11 Moon landing probably has something to do with this (I'll let you do the math to figure out my age). Anyway we've spent over 3 decades going basically nowhere and as it turns out space is a really hazardous place to stay for long periods of time. So while I'm still very much pro space exploration it is time to hand the baton to robots. Insisting that Man can do some things better is probably only true for the short term anyway. Better to embrace our robotic assisted lives by using the space program as a driving program to accelerate robotics instead of as a meat grinder for human flesh.

What NASA should REALLY focus on are sample return missions. That is where the real big bang for scientific buck will come.

ROTFLMAO

[PortHaven]

Hey Slashdot,

"How LOWWWWWW can we go?"

This is "recent" research. Sheesh. I remember hearing about cosmic radiation's effect of aging when I was like 4 yrs old. (I just turned 30.)

Anyways, can someone please review the articles for some relanvancy to life. I mean, sheesh, this is a known issue. It's why one of the discussions regarding all deep space missions revolves around how best to shield the crew from cosmic radiation.

*yawn*

Oh yes, btw,...let me show you this great new revolutionary idea I've come up with.... I call it the "Space Shuttle"

Confused?

[Geoff St. Germaine]

This is possibly the most confused article I've ever seen here. Somebody doesn't understand relativity, but decided to include implications of it in an article about the cellular effects of radiation.